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Searching Message Filters for certain entries

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I have about 250 message filters that I have setup since 2006. The message filters take my POP mail and sort it into the inbox folders, delete the mail I don't want and even remove the entries from my POP server to keep things tidy. The filters work perfectly and some filters have more than 100 entries into a single filter! I have several hundred hours in this filtering and , as I said, the filtering is perfect. Now for my problem. I can go into "Message Filters" and use the search to locate the message filter I am attempting to edit. However, once inside the message filter, I cannot search for any entry that I have added to that filter. Sometimes, the filter may have 50-60 entries in it and it would be handy to be able to sort for the entry I need. Please understand that the message filter entries are applied in order (from top to bottom) and so, sorting the entries alphabetically would ruin the filter. I would like to know how to search ALL of the message filters for any entry inside the filter. It would be VERY HANDY if I could simply go to "Message Filters" and perform a search that would list not only the FILTER the entry was in but all occurrences of the search term as both a FILTER and an ENTRY TO THE FILTER. That is the way the email search works. If you search for any word in the search, it tells you every occurrence of the email and any occurrence of that search term inside any email. Can we make the search of message filters work the same way? Or, if it works this way, can you tell me how to use the search to find an entry WITHIN a message filter? Thank You.

I have about 250 message filters that I have setup since 2006. The message filters take my POP mail and sort it into the inbox folders, delete the mail I don't want and even remove the entries from my POP server to keep things tidy. The filters work perfectly and some filters have more than 100 entries into a single filter! I have several hundred hours in this filtering and , as I said, the filtering is perfect. Now for my problem. I can go into "Message Filters" and use the search to locate the message filter I am attempting to edit. However, once inside the message filter, I cannot search for any entry that I have added to that filter. Sometimes, the filter may have 50-60 entries in it and it would be handy to be able to sort for the entry I need. Please understand that the message filter entries are applied in order (from top to bottom) and so, sorting the entries alphabetically would ruin the filter. I would like to know how to search ALL of the message filters for any entry inside the filter. It would be VERY HANDY if I could simply go to "Message Filters" and perform a search that would list not only the FILTER the entry was in but all occurrences of the search term as both a FILTER and an ENTRY TO THE FILTER. That is the way the email search works. If you search for any word in the search, it tells you every occurrence of the email and any occurrence of that search term inside any email. Can we make the search of message filters work the same way? Or, if it works this way, can you tell me how to use the search to find an entry WITHIN a message filter? Thank You.

All Replies (1)

You might find some search options with this add-on:

https://services.addons.thunderbird.net/eN-US/thunderbird/addon/quickfilters/

If you have filters with long lists of contacts to filter on From, it might be more efficient to create address books and set the From condition to 'is in my address book' + <name of address book>, as it is easier to search address books.

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